Mersey Remakes

So, what have I learnt from my little foray into the most celebrated Indie games of the year?

…well, aside from the fact that my own method of judgement is only ever so slightly more fair than a poll on a forum for people to vote on. (Hey, at least I tried all of these games before voting *and* I’d actually played the game I voted for beforehand also. I didn’t just do it because some nice bloke on one of the forums I visit asked me to.)

Well, to be frank, I’ve learnt very little. I’ve managed to conclude that most of the games I’ve tried quite possibly aren’t for me, and in all likelihood were never aimed at me anyway.

I’ve discovered a couple of games I probably would never have played were it not going through this, and that makes it worthwhile, kinda.

I’ve managed to cement my nagging doubts that no amount of gloss and sheen can make up for a shit game, and also that some folks idea of good and decent production values certainly don’t tally with mine. Conversely, low production values mean nothing when the game is fabulous fun to play.

I’ve seen some genuinely interesting concepts of games and some seriously tired games, but most of all - I’ve had very little fun from most of these games - even in 5 minute blasts. Ok, you could possibly argue that certain games take more than 5 minutes to get into - and in all honesty I did go back to a couple afterwards to play some more. Kudos, Fastcrawl and Motorama turned out to be worth revisiting from the games I’d not played before. But by and large, so many of the so called best of the best up for the Players Choice awards (and indeed, special prize winners seens as its taken me 3 days to finish this little lot off) I’d have been ashamed to be seen dead with were they on a ZX Spectrum in the eighties and cost £1.99.

Do half of these deserve to be nominated for anything than getting the authors strung up by their bollocks? Well, no - they don’t sadly - the amount of derivative, generic dirge I’ve just sat through made me near suicidal and I really didn’t think I’d reach the end still breathing. And don’t get me started on the comic strip thing again. Why?

I find it pretty hard to grasp that this lot is really the best the Indie market has to offer… probably because I know that really, its not. But it is depressing to know that there’s freeware made in the past 12 months that shits on half of these games from a great height and has had infinitely more time and effort expended in the playability stakes and in a fair few cases, with far far better production values as well that gets next to no recognition outside of certain excellent websites that I frequent. (Or is that reassuring? Hmmm… *strokes beard*).

So, what did I vote for?

Lets put it this way, it didn’t win.

Does that matter? Nah, not at all - I know its a fantastic game and thats all that counts and not winning a virtually meaningless award isn’t going to diminish its brilliance in the slightest.

I don’t think I’ll put myself through this again next year though.